Mr Abdelreza’s statement said: “I believed people were being killed. I have never heard anything like that sound ever before in my life.

“It shocked me and filled me with such terror.”

The lawyers say the five witnesses are labourers from Majar al-Kabir with “absolutely nothing” to do with the insurgent Mehdi army, who engaged British troops at the Battle of Danny Boy.

Showing images of corpses from the battle, Mr Day said: “The nature of a number of the injuries of the Iraqis would seem to us to be highly unusual in a battlefield.

“For example, quite how so many of the Iraqis sustained single gunshots to the head and from seemingly at close quarter, how did two of them end with their eyes gouged out, how did one have his penis cut off [and] some have torture wounds?”

“There is the clearest evidence available of systematic abuse and systematic failings at the very highest levels of politicians, the civil service and the military,” said Mr Shiner.

Mr Day was previously involved in legal action launched against the MoD over allegations by more than 200 Masai women in Kenya that they were raped by British soldiers in the 1970s.

An American occupation force joined by the Iraqi forth regiment raided Al-Siha district at the right side of Mosul city.

They attacked a house of a pregnant woman, started beating her harshly and she was screaming and crying from the pain, one of the Iraqi government forces his name is Caesar Saadi Al-Jibouri from Al-Qiara district asked them to stop beating the woman, the answer came through the interpreter was “we do what we want”.

The Iraqi soldier went to one of the armed vehicles and opened fire killing three Americans among them a captain and injured the interpreter.

Whatever weakness occurred to the nation, there comes a time when they will revolt against the occupation just like Caesar’ [one man] revolution, this incident must be a good breakthrough for Iraqis who have been involved in the service of the occupier.

While the Association of Muslim Scholars condemns these criminal acts of the occupation forces, AMSI shows its jubilation with the heroic act from the Iraqi soldier and asks employees of the police and army to consider his act as role model.

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.

“Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.

This is how they (those wretched unter menschen we affectionately refer to as AmeriKKKans) treat their own. Imagine what these scum do to Iraqis. Try to imagine how many others have disappeared into that container, shared that same bed…

Doubtless, in some quarters, the incident will be likened to hazing, or the kind of hi-jinks found at college frat parties; “it was all good clean fun”. Our disgust will be condemned as being unsupportive of the troops, and putting them in harms way, and besides, we don’t have all the details…

Or maybe she’ll be declared a whore by the liberal media (she was asking for it).

British army spokesman Major David Gell said the animals were thought to be a kind of honey badger – melivora capensis – which can be fierce but are not usually dangerous to humans unless provoked.

“They are native to the region but rare in Iraq. They’re nocturnal carnivores with a fearsome reputation, but they don’t stalk humans and carry them back to their lair,” he said. Both the scientists and the soldiers agree that the badger ought not to be a danger to humans, but so far they have failed to reassure the populace.

“I was sleeping at night when this strange animal hit me on my head. I have not seen such an animal before. My husband hurried to shoot it but it was as swift as a deer,” Suad Hassan, a 30-year-old housewife said. “It is the size of a dog but his head is like a monkey. It runs so quickly.”

Cell phone video of the badgers circulating in Basra shows a stocky skunk-like animal with long front claws. The honey badger, or ratel, is known as a brave predator capable of killing a cobra. It weighs up to 14kg.

Sattar Jabbar, a 50-year-old local farmer from Abu Sakhar north of Basra, believes the badger can tackle even large prey. “I saw it three days ago at night attacking animals. It even ate a cow. It tore the cow up piece by piece. I tried to shoot it with my gun but it ran away into the orchards. I missed it,” he said.

So now we know the truth, that Iranian “hospitality” is no better than American. Except for one small thing; The American’s morbid, some might say perversely sexual, preoccupation with the use physical torture.

Mr Sharafi said he was taken from the Karrada district to a base near Baghdad airport and questioned in Arabic and English. “The CIA officials’ questions focused mainly on Iran’s presence and influence in Iraq,” he said. “When faced with my responses on Iran’s official ties with the Iraqi government they increased the torture.”

Y’all come back now, y’hear? Those hillbillies extended a warm southern welcome to that al-Qaeda ay-rab terrorist, and he didn’t have the decency to say thanks…

One of them dropped to the floor screaming, “They are going to execute us.” Another could be heard throwing up. Lt Felix Carman, 26, managed to struggle out of his bindings and rip his blindfold off. He yelled that there was no firing squad, to relax, before the Iranian guards jumped on him.

Water-boarding anyone?

Royal Marine Joe Tindall said: “They [the Iranians] changed from the military dress to all black, their faces covered. There were weapons cocking. Someone, I’m not sure who, someone said: ‘Lads, lads, I think we’re going to get executed.’ After that comment someone was sick and as far as I was concerned he had just had his throat cut.” Lieutenant Felix Carman added: “Some of us feared the worst.”

So the Iranians seem to have adopted your own techniques, without the actual physical bodily harm, because of the great success you’ve had with them. Maybe they should have shipped them off to Syria, or Egypt (you know, to those good folks who do such sterling work for the Americans) for some legitimate interrogation.

As the sailors and marines told their stories, the Guardian learned that the US had offered to buzz Iran with fighter jets during the impasse. Diplomatic sources said that, Pentagon officials offered a series of military options, including for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases. Britain told the Pentagon to calm the situation by staying out of it and tone down military exercises in the Gulf.

The Americans, true to form, offer to blow the shit out of everything, and the British opt for the diplomatic approach. For all the current British administration’s faults, for all their complicity in this global atrocity, for all their culpability in the lies that led to this outrage, they are not Americans, insofar as they understand diplomacy. Truly they are a match made in hell.

Meanwhile, the Iranians are convinced that separatist guerrilla attacks in Khuzestan and Baluchistan provinces are the work of British and US intelligence respectively. Earlier this week, ABC television news reported that a Baluchi group, Jundullah, based in Pakistan and carrying out raids inside Iran, had been receiving advice and encouragement from American officials since 2005.

No! The Americans offering “advice and encouragement” to terrorists?

I am so sick of this farce. I am so sick of American adventurism. I am so sick of American imperialism masquerading as a force for freedom. I am so sick of American hypocrisy. I am so sick of America.

Break out the candles, put on a party hat, the Iraq outrage is 4 years old today;

Seven US soldiers died in Iraq at the weekend, bringing to 3,217 the number of American combat fatalities since the invasion four years ago tomorrow. Four were killed by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad.

Mission accomplished! 4 more years… 4 more years… What about the surge?

US troop levels in Iraq are set to rise higher than at any time since the war began four years ago, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. This summer, troop levels will top 160,000 – compared with the 150,000 there were at the time of the invasion.

I see. I know it’s early days (a mere 2 months into the surge) but what about observable returns on investment?

Despite the month-long security crackdown in the capital, six people were killed and 30 injured by a car bomb blast in a Shia suburb yesterday.

Bush, you are a master gambler. You played your hand, and now you must take the pot. Operation Iraqi Liberation (or OIL for short) is quite a pot…

In all, 24 corpses were found in different parts of the city.

Only 24? Now that’s a success by any one’s standards. Heckuva job there Bushy and Cheney.

General David Petraeus, the new commander of US forces, spoke of “encouraging signs” in Baghdad, but told the BBC he did not want to get “overly optimistic on the basis of several weeks of a reduced sectarian murder rate“.

Once again, Petraeus speaks of “encouraging signs”, without sharing these signs with us (they must be very private, or even ecstatic, visions). Methinks he is a liar and a charlatan.

For Iraqis, every year has been worse than the last since 2003. In November and December last year alone 5,000 civilians were murdered, often tortured to death, according to the UN. This toll compares to 3,000 killed in 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland. Many Iraqis have voted with their feet, some two million fleeing – mostly to Syria and Jordan – since President George Bush and Tony Blair ordered US and British troops across the Iraqi border four years ago today.

Are these signs “encouraging” Petraeus?

The US troop “surge” has allowed hundreds of families to return to homes abandoned in the face of sectarian attacks.

Doubtless at gunpoint. “We’re here for your freedom, gawd-demmit! No shut the f@ck up and get back to your mud huts!”

“Moving security forces into an insurgent area to ‘shut it down’ is like stamping on a puddle – the large pool of water disappears, but little splashes and spots radiate out from it,” said the official. “So if security operations are all you are doing, they will have local and temporary effects. Violence will decrease, but only where you are operating, and when you leave it will come back.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, what say the imbecile in chief;

In a far cry from his boast in May 2003 of mission accomplished, Mr Bush offered a more modest assessment, saying the war could still be won… “Four years after this war began, the fight is difficult, but it can be won. It will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through,” he said.

Lets just hope we all have the courage and the resolve to see this embarrassment through.

“The new strategy will need more time to take effect. And there will be good days, and there will be bad days ahead as the security plan unfolds.” He predicted that success “will take months, not days or weeks”.

Ah, the good days before Bush and Cheney (not to mention Rummy)… You attempt to seduce us, you silver tongued devil, with sweet words. But it doesn’t work. The reality of the situation breaks the illusion.

Some other impressions of how things are going;

But the political side of the “surge” plan is going badly, according to the Pentagon and others. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is showing little enthusiasm for American attempts to reverse one of their own worst mistakes: the “de-Baathification” of the old regime, which removed thousands of Sunni military commanders and pushed them into the insurgency. “In one sentence,” the official concluded, “my take on the current situation is: ‘Right strategy, great team, possibly too late.’“

We can only imagine what the house of no ideas has in store for all of us next.

The top US general in Iraq says the military alone cannot provide a solution to the country’s conflict.

Top US generals learn a lot more slowly than the rest of the world.

Gen Petraeus said: “There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency of Iraq. Military action is necessary to help improve security… but it is not sufficient. There needs to be a political aspect.”

Eh… Did I hear you correctly? Is this an earnest admission, or an all-too-typically cynical attempt, from an all-too-typically cynical and inept military, to seek a solution to a problem they created through their incompetence? Is it a strategy designed to merely buy time and forestall the inevitable?

Gen Petraeus said: “It’s too early to discern significant trends, but there have been a few encouraging signs.”

and elsewhere;

“I think that we expected that there would be in the short-term an increase in violence as the surge began to make itself felt,” Mr Gates said, adding there were other “very preliminary positive signs” the security plan was working.

And here’s where you furnish us with examples of these positive, or encouraging, signs.

“Car bombs have targeted hundreds of Iraqis,” Petraeus said. He also denounced the wave of other attacks, including the “thugs with no soul” who have killed more than 150 Shiite pilgrims in the past three days.

Yes, yes. We read the news. Question: what do you mean by soul? Question: are you a man of god, or do you believe in the unifying power of a type of American popular music? Question: who exactly are the thugs with no soul?

He said US and Iraqi forces must “control the demons responsible for the vicious sectarian violence of the past year – demons who have torn at the very fabric of Iraqi society“.

Behold! An example of the American school of rhetoric in full flow… Such demagoguery! Such bombastic, high-flown, prose! Such poverty of meaning! Such biblical references! Such invention… Such calculated deception.

The demons responsible? Why that would be you guys. The US military. Please restrain yourselves. And by the way, you’ve failed. Sit at the front of the class with the other special students.